WoW – More fun together!

Stat Inflation

So I’ve been wondering how Blizzard would solve the gear inflation issue – current players have insane gear compared to what future levelers will have. But just glancing at the jewelcrafting info that’s been datamined, it looks like they’re going for the “instantly blow past old epics” method. The new lowest level gems, the common green ones, will be twice as good as our current epic gems! If that follows for all gear – and it looks like it does – you’ll upgrade from your Northrend gear the same way you swap out your rag-tag old world stuff when you first hit BC: do a handful of easy quests in the first zone, get greens, profit.

Northrend ore and jewels are essentially worthless the day Cataclysm drops, until they get scarce enough that you can sell them to profession levelers. I might have to go stock up on some BC and Vanilla ore though to sell when the expansion drops… there’s always folks looking to change professions…

Of course that will make leveling interesting. Either the first wave of quest in Cata will be dirt easy or when levelers from from Wrath to Cata in a year they will hit a big wall until they swap most of their gear. Maybe there will be a series of fedex quests to get your first set of greens.

I did the starter quests in Vashj’ir in the gear I copied my char over with (T10ish, but not BiS, probably half 264 and half 251) and they were very easy. I didn’t get to any quest with a green reward, so I can’t compare, but the weapon that dropped in Blackrock thingie was better than any in my bags (at least in terms of spellpower).

You mentioned doing some flying around. So tell me, how ‘full’ did they make the world?

Looking at maps and also my experiance with useing eagle eye and other remote viewing skills (targetting mountain tops) shows me that old world is VERY empty comparied to outlands and Northrend as soon as you take off. The mountain ranges and ‘dead’ areas between zones are quite large and empty. Did it feel like the did a good job of filling those in a bit?

It looks like the put whole zones in most of the world’s worst ‘dead’ zones. I am hoping they also scattered more interesting scenary and spawn areas up in various mountain ranges. I look forward to flying around and finding out fo the way interesting things. I always loved exploring.